Amazon PPC: Agency vs Doing It In-House
Plenty of sellers manage their own Amazon ads perfectly well, and if your spend is modest you probably should. The question isn't whether an agency is better in the abstract — it's whether the money they save you and the hours they give back exceed what they charge. Here's the honest math.
In-House / DIY vs a custom system
| In-House / DIY | Custom (OC Systems) | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Your time — a few hours a week | A management fee on top of ad spend |
| Weekly discipline | Depends on how busy your week is | Search-term harvesting happens every week regardless |
| Category experience | Limited to your own account | Patterns seen across accounts and categories |
| Speed of learning | You learn on your own budget | Mistakes already paid for elsewhere |
| Control | Total | Shared — you approve strategy, we execute |
| Break-even | Cheapest below roughly $5k/mo spend | Usually pays for itself above that |
When In-House / DIY is the better choice
- Your ad spend is low enough that a management fee would eat the gains
- You genuinely enjoy the optimization work and make time for it weekly
- You have one or two simple products in an uncompetitive category
When a custom system wins
- Spend is high enough that a few percent of waste exceeds the management fee
- The weekly search-term work keeps slipping because you're running a business
- You're expanding SKUs or categories and the account has outgrown ad-hoc management
The bottom line
Below roughly $5,000 a month in ad spend, doing it yourself is usually the right call — the fee is hard to justify. Above that, the waste an unmanaged account accumulates typically exceeds what management costs. We'll look at your numbers and tell you which side you're on, even if the answer is to keep doing it yourself.
Frequently asked questions
At what ad spend does an agency make sense?
Do you charge a percentage of ad spend?
Can you train my team instead of managing it?
Not sure which is right for you?
Tell Jordan what you're using now and where it's falling short. We'll give you an honest answer — even if that answer is "stick with what you have."